WEBVTT - Part One: Alfredo Stroessner: The Luckiest Dictator 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:05.560 Like a like a hero, Sophie, I deal with all 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:09.680 sorts of stresses that you can't even imagine, like the 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:15.600 stress of writing an episode about Alfredo Stressner, the dictator 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:21.000 of Paraguay. Boom. How's that? Also the episode started like 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:25.800 twenty seconds ago. Uh huh yeah, okay, Well we're doing great. 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.600 That was perfect. That was such a good introduction. Yeah, 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:35.199 thank you, thank you everybody. How you doing, Sophie fu? 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:43.519 So this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Sophie 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:47.240 and I banter and then people on the subreddit decide 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:54.960 whether or not it's problematic. Um, it's the moral north 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.639 Star that is sebred Thank god. I just think it's 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:01.880 so I just the the subreddit. It's so funny sometimes 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:06.000 where they're like, oh is uh is everything okay? There? 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:12.240 It's like yes, but also no, none of it's okay. Yeah. 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.440 I mean the thing is, we love our fans, and 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:19.480 I appreciate that there's fifty five thousand people who want 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:21.560 to talk about the show and a subreddit that's that's 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.720 kind of amazing. But at the same time, there's like 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.600 a degree of all of these podcast episodes, everything we do, 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:30.320 there's like a script. Today's script for this two part 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:32.560 or is eighty six hundred and sixty five words. It's 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.120 usually between eight and ten thousand words, but also like 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:37.200 a third of the runtime of any episode. It's just 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:41.000 us talking and the amount of fine tooth comb going 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.120 over that people do like of like a like little 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.240 jokes or like someone will misspeak or you'll transpose a 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:49.360 couple of letters in a word, and then there's like 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:54.240 thirty people talking about it, and it's like, guys, come on, man, 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.280 we are recording a conversation. You know how those work. 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.880 We've already recorded several of the conversations. We will make 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:05.400 some gaffs. Yeah, to chill out, Come on, man, chill out. 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:09.760 God bless the people. I know. I yeah, I like subredits. Man. 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:12.200 I keep in my heart the people who are alike 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:14.840 just listening to this so they don't have to be 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.080 alone with their thoughts while driving or vacuuming the house 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:23.000 or you know, shearing a goat walking the dog. God 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.919 bless all of you. God bless you, and God bless 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.760 us everyone. James Stout, welcome to the program. Thank you, Robert. 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.399 It's glad to be here. Yep. Amongst the goat shearers, 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:37.680 amongst the goat Shearers, James, what do you know about Paraguay? 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.440 A relatively little. Actually, it's not another big area of 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.040 expertise for me, So I'm excited to learn. I'm gonna 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:47.280 I'm gonna venture to say, it's not really an expertise 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.000 for many people outside of Paraguay. This is not a 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:52.920 country that gets talked about a lot. It's certainly not 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.280 a country that, like Americans, talk about a lot. I 0:02:56.320 --> 0:03:00.440 had to really, really aggressively go into the reading about 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.600 this to learn much of any just because, like my life, 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:05.640 the first thirty four years of my life had not 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:10.720 provided me with much information passively about the country of Paraguay. Now, 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.920 Paraguay is, if you're like me, and up until recently 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.239 had not spent much time thinking about the country is 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:21.480 a lovely little landlocked nation bordered by Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina. 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.359 And it is perhaps the most doomed little country I've 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:28.480 ever read about. Maybe Belgium, but they wound up dooming 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:30.600 a lot of other people and Paraguay never did that. 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:34.560 So the subject for our episode today is another little 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:39.440 another dictator, Alfredo Stressner. And you know, we got to 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:41.640 go through some history before we talk about Stressner because 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.360 as a man himself, he's not the most like He's 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.960 not like Hitler or like Saddam, where his early life, 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:51.000 as dark as it is, is just this like wacky 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:56.960 cavalcade of madness. Stressner is a guy who is an 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:01.120 incredibly effective dictator. He might be best at being a 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.040 dictator if anybody we've covered on this show, but he's 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.120 also the best at being a dictator because he kind 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:10.600 of lucks into the perfect situation for a dictator. Paraguay 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:13.240 is almost like crafted over the course of about one 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:16.200 hundred and fifty years to be the ideal country to 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:19.200 have a dictator like Stressner. I've never really encountered a 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:22.120 situation like this in a history, and it's fascinating as 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.000 a result of that, But it all kind of comes 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:27.080 back to the fact that Paraguay might kind of be 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:32.520 cursed this. They have a rough chunk of history after 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:37.799 the liberation from Spain. Like most of Latin America, Paraguays 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:41.080 founded as a Spanish colony in the early sixteenth century 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:44.320 and up until the last twenty years or so, it 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:47.520 was not democratic in any meaningful way. One book that 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.760 I read Paraguay under Stressner by Paul Lewis describes it 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.640 as an unbroken sequence of dictatorships. Now, that is a 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.680 nasty way to describe a political situation. It's also worth 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:00.160 noting that when we're talking about the eighteen hundreds, that's 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.599 an accurate description for basically everywhere on Earth. Like you 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:06.880 could argue it's not that far off from describing the 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.240 United States in that period, given the amount of people 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.400 who are enslaved or otherwise disinfraniation. So Paraguay is not alone, 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.280 you know, in the eighteen hundreds and having a bunch 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:21.040 of dictatorships. Um. Now, when the country achieved its independence 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.320 from Spain in eighteen eleven, it left behind a Obviously 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:27.159 Spain was a could be a very brutal colonial master, 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:34.200 but it didn't like do so in order to take 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:38.279 on a more liberatory political system. The architect of their 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.840 split from Spain, a guy named doctor Jose Gaspar Rodriguez 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.520 de Francia, wound up as dictator, and that's probably not surprised. 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:47.680 Was not surprising to that many people. He seems to 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.200 have been fairly popular. He spends twenty five years in power, 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.320 which is a substantial reign for a dictator. Stalin Mao, 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:57.919 both only get like four years more than that, and 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.400 those are kind of two famously, and this is eighteen eleven, 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:04.039 which makes it, I think more impressive. Yeah, because people 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.240 didn't look very long. Yeah. So he's in there a 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.279 long time. And while he's in charge, you know, it 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.840 is a dictatorship, and he brutally purges, you know, any 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.240 kind of opposition that attempts to form. But for most Paraguayans, 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:22.080 it's a pretty peaceful and relatively positive time, especially compared 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:24.800 to kind of the previous period. It's worth noting that 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.320 his official title voted to him by the Populace was 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.880 El Supremo, so they could vote for his title, but 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:37.320 not for when I vote put quotation marks. I don't know. 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:39.520 It's like a thing where they've got like a parliament 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:43.160 or whatever, or a congress that's like, you know, is 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.400 basically enthralled to the dictator and periodically he'll have it 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:48.920 vote for things. You know. That's kind of the story 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:51.880 of Paraguay for quite a while. I want to be 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:54.599 judging this guy based on his apparent but this man 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:58.680 has a face like a spank toss if we I've 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.039 never heard anyone describe that way. Next leg. I spoke 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.479 a picture for him in a chat, and I think 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:08.080 it'll come to you like that is they's not a looker. 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:13.119 Oh my god, you know his face people, you need 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:15.440 to google this man. His face does look like a 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.600 spanked ass. If there's no other way of coming. If 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:19.440 you put a nose on an us, that would be 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:22.000 his face. It's like the bottom half of its His 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:26.160 face collapsed in on itself because he smelled something so unpleasant, 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:30.720 like it looks like he's yeah, like awful. His five 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:35.239 head is is Yeah, really, it's incredible. What a horrible portrait. 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:39.480 I wonder if he killed the person who painted this, 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:43.400 because look, if I would, that would be okay. I'm 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:47.600 just gonna say it. It's having this portrait made of you. 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.200 It justifies at least one murder. This person struck a 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:56.520 powerful blow for democracy. Cons So. One of the fun 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.760 things about Paraguayan dictators is that they all are named 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:04.800 like luchadors um. So this guy is El Supremo. His successor, 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:10.160 Carlos Antonio Lopez, who's also dictator for life, is El Excellentissimo. Um. 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:12.760 Oh wow, yeah, I know it's fun. These are these 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:16.920 are some good names. I'm gonna be yeah. Um he 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:19.160 was like, yeah, we gotta throw a fucking adjective up 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.720 on that. Yeah, I'm taking to the max. So if 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.240 you look at Paraguay on a map again, it is 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.960 immediately obvious why the country has had such a tumultuous history. 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:34.000 It is landlocked, and it is surrounded by Brazil and Argentina, 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.800 two countries that are famously not peaceful with their neighbors 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:42.040 during the eighteen hundreds. Um, although it's Paraguay that's going 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:45.160 to be starting shit with them. So the early eighteen 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.120 hundreds are not a peaceful time in South America. And 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:50.840 given the fact that Paraguay lacked any natural difference, so 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.640 Paraguay is kind of geographically you might think of them 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.439 as the opposite of Switzerland. Switzerland is like such a 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.280 natural fortress that even with very few people, they could 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:04.040 hold off as many times their size. Paraguay has basically 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.720 no natural offenses other than that it's hot and there's 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:10.880 lots of mosquitoes, which isn't nothing, but like anyone can 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.400 kind of walk in there and cause problems. And so 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:18.920 as a result, it's early dictators chose wisely to invest 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.680 very heavily in the army. They're like, we're probably gonna 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.240 wind up getting our asses kicked if we don't do this. 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:30.079 And by the time Carlos Lopez, that's l Excellentissimo dies, 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:34.960 his son, Francisco Solano Lopez takes power and at that 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.720 point the little country has a military that is larger 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:40.319 and more well funded than one would expect from a 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:45.920 country of that size. Unfortunately, Francisco Lopez is um, he's 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.120 going to take an ill advised year abroad to Europe. 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.080 It's actually more like eighteen months. When he's in his 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.640 twenties now. A lot of people go on gap year 0:09:54.840 --> 0:10:00.000 and you know, it's, yeah, go to some raves and yeah, 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.800 intolerable in Barcelona. Yeah, it takes some e briefly date 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.680 a German girl who has interesting opinions on the moon landing. 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.680 You know, it's it's all. We've all had good experiences 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.000 on our gap year. Unfortunately, that is not the case 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:22.760 with Francisco Lopez, because so his equivalent of entering into 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:25.400 an ill advised romantic relationship from someone he met at 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.120 a rave is he hangs out with Emperor Napoleon the 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.600 third of France, um friend of the pod and so 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:36.720 I'm gonna quote from an article in the January twenty 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.439 thirteen issue of Military Heritage magazine. Here he was taken 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:43.200 particularly with the glittering marshal splendor of the court of 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.320 the French Emperor Napoleon the Third. Returning home, Lopez brought 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:48.880 back with him several steamships to fill out the embryonic 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:52.000 Paraguayan fleet, along with all the guns, ammunition, and gold 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.839 braid that his deep pockets could purchase. He also brought 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.840 back it's it's a bling that. Yeah, he's he's getting 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.040 going doubt. He also brought black a new mistress, an 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.800 Irish adventuress named Eliza Lynch, who, like many a gold 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.800 digger before her, catered to her meal tickets outsized ego, 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:13.199 recklessly encouraging his delusions of grandeur in dreams of imperial glory. Now, 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:15.920 I don't know how entirely fair it is to blame 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.160 this Irish jack. We are like, what happens next, But 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:22.880 that's how that magazine put it. Yeah, so conte Military 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.600 Heritage being particularly woke on gender, Yeah, that is very 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:29.520 likely that said she does come up in any rite 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:31.200 up you find it. The guy. I think there's there's 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:32.760 a lot going on. I mean, he's a rich kid 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.640 whose dad was the dictator, and he goes to Europe, 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.800 falls in love with these European armies, and he builds 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:42.840 himself a splendid little army based on the solid base 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:45.480 that his dad has left him. In eighteen fifty seventies, 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.000 made vice president to Paraguay, and then in eighteen sixty 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.600 two his dad dies in Francisco, takes power, and he 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.120 from the beginning he cannot give up kind of these 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:59.280 these dreams Napoleon had stoked of military excellence. He's a 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:01.480 little bit like that doomed Hapsburg who's going to get 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:05.880 murdered in Mexico right around this same time period. So 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.400 this little military, very good military his predecessors had built, 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:12.280 was adequate, very adequate to the task of defending Paraguay 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:16.760 from intrusion by a neighbor. So he's he's got this 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:20.640 toy like his for Lopez, this wonderful army that his 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.280 predecessors built is like this big, shiny toy, and he 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.280 spends like a couple of years outfitting it and getting 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:29.880 it really set up. But he's, you know, the reasonable 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:32.280 thing to do if you're Paraguay is just kind of 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.400 try to keep being Paraguay, right, as opposed to starting 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.319 a war with the neighbors who surround you and are 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.920 all much larger. Lopez, though, he wants to be a 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.840 big continental power like France, and so in eighteen sixty 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:50.080 four he decides to um to take that leap, you know, 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:54.440 to throw the iron dice. So Uruguay, which is you know, 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:57.160 pretty close, is racked by a sort of soft civil 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:00.400 war at the time between two rival political parties. Again 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:03.040 neither of them is very democratic, but one of these 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:06.280 parties is backed or one of these parties, which is 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:08.679 like the party in power at the time, is friendly 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:12.680 with Lopez and Paraguay. Brazil backs the other party, and 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.360 in this kind of internecine struggle, the party that Brazil 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.160 is backing and arming wins. Lopez takes offense to this. 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.760 He demands that Brazil stopped giving military support to Uruguay, 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.520 and Brazil is like, you guys are like a speed bump, 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:29.199 where Brazil, of course not you. What do you think 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:33.160 we're gonna listen to you? They are much bigger. So 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.920 he makes a questionable decision. Paraguay is on this river 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.600 and there's like a Brazilian merchant ship that's import in 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.640 the capital, and he has his forces sees that merchant 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:47.880 ship and when they do, they find out that the 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:52.080 Brazilian governor of the bordering province of Matta Groso is 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:55.160 on the ship. So Lopez arrests this guy, throws him 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:57.560 in a dungeon and then sends his arm and then 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:01.560 invades Matta Groso and like, and it's this, it's a 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:05.080 very big, sparsely populated province. He basically just marches in, 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.680 takes the tiny capital town and then it's like, we 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:14.320 own this whole thing. So that is a bold yeah, okay, 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.840 doubling the side of his country in one fells group, yeah, 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.480 and thinking this will probably be okay. So, like, this 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:24.040 is a bold move at the best of times. And 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:26.680 if he had just wound up going to war with Brazil, 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:31.200 that's a tough fight for Paraguay, right, That's like that's 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:37.360 like Kansas going to war with the entire state of Texas. 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.400 Like it's not you know, the kind of odds are 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:43.640 stacked against him as he is as it is, but 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:47.160 he doesn't like stop just at taking Mattagroso, because the 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.520 next thing he does is He's still pissed that Brazil 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.200 has backed the side he didn't like in this conflict 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.400 in Uruguay. So he sends his army to Uruguay to 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:58.880 like take back power for his people. And at the time, 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.200 by the way, while he's doing all of this, he 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:04.520 has he has himself get voted the nickname El Supremo. 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:09.080 So El Supremo sends his forces off to to Uruguay 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:11.760 to win some glory. But the problem is that there's 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:18.440 like this slice of Argentina. So Lopez like asks for 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:23.880 permission to send his army through, and Argentina is like, no, hey, 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:25.400 what do you what are he of course not, We're 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:27.840 not gonna let you do this, and so he declares 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:32.280 war on Argentina too, So great, what a chat. The 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.280 third thing that happens is that because of everything else 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:38.120 we've talked about, Uruguay winds up declaring war on him 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:42.840 as well. Um. So this is a this is a 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:47.320 bad situation to be in um And he, you know, 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.160 he launches a couple of attacks with his well made 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:52.880 little army, and his well made little army winds up 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:55.400 getting just bashed to pieces, in large part because he 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.000 is an incompetent commander. After thousands and thousands are dead, 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:01.760 it becomes clear to Supremo that the population of young 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.480 adult males is not going to be enough to sustain 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:08.400 Paraguay's war effort, so he starts drafting children, creating battalions 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.000 of twelve year olds to hold the line and suicidal 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:13.720 last stands to delay the enemy. For an idea of 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:16.640 how yeah, for an idea of how bad this is, 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:19.880 there are ports of like Brazilian soldiers massacring trench lines 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:21.960 and then when they realize they've just shot a bunch 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.080 of twelve year olds, like weeping and like just breaking 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:29.800 down because like you know, like that's a pretty bad situation. 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:34.480 Twelve year old. No, nobody, very few people want to 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:39.320 kill twelve years yeah. Yeah. So, as this war drags on, 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.520 Lopez starts drafting old men and eventually even women. He 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:45.200 has them doing a lot of logistics work in the back, 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:49.640 and in eighteen sixty nine, Asuncion the capitol falls and 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:52.640 Lopez flees into the hills to fight a guerrilla war, 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.040 which he is just as bad at as the rest 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:57.840 of this The last of his forces are surrounded in 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.760 eighteen seventy and he dies a band ending them trying 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:06.520 to wade across the river. So now that's that's that's 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.200 kind of funny the way this ends. And like, objectively, 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:11.800 there's an absurdity to how badly this war goes. But 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.320 like James, you and I have both reported on and 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:16.760 studied a lot of wars. I don't think I've ever 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.320 read about a war that goes worse for a country. 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:21.639 No war this goes. This is called the War of 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.800 the Triple Alliance. So the death toll of the War 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:27.840 of the Triple Alliance is comparable to the American Civil War. 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:31.800 There is no accurate pre war census of Paraguay. All 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.800 of the estimates of the of the percentage of the 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.960 country that dies are kind of based on calculations that 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.840 are themselves a little bit of a crapshoot um. But 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.320 I have every analysis that I've read makes basically the 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.320 same point, which is, Paraguay suffered a higher percentage of 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.159 its populace dead than any country in a war I 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:54.520 can I can name. Um. The most common estimates say 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.639 that two thirds of the pre war population die. Um. 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.080 Some estimates place the death tolet. There are estimates as 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.520 high as ninety percent, although that's likely high, but everyone 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.439 seems degrees sixty per seventy percent of the entire country 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:12.280 dead is a reasonable estimate. This includes nine ninety percent 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:16.320 of the pre war male population. Wow, and so post 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:18.359 war chunks of the country will have a twenty to 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:22.600 one ratio of women to men. So that's about as 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:25.200 bad as a war could go. Yeah, yeah, that's not great. 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:29.160 That's it's really sub optimalcome for everyone. Yeah, maybe from 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:34.359 the dude to survive, but yeah, the graphic collapse, wow, yeah, 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:36.080 it is, it is it. It's like, I don't I've 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:38.720 ever heard of a war going that badly, Like when 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:42.000 you're making German casualties in World War two seem like, 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:47.520 well that's you know, you can bats back from that. Yeah, yeah, 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:49.440 I mean it didn't even do like twelve year olds 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:51.159 at the Battle of the Psalm that is. Yeah. I 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:55.239 love that the sort of the misogyny kept on if 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.240 when they were sending twelve year olds out there, that like, 0:18:57.440 --> 0:18:59.240 we've got to keep women out of the front line, 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.520 can't company yea guns? Yep. It's uh, there's a lot 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:06.080 actually to say about because I've read a couple of 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:08.399 articles about this about like the way in which this 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:11.679 impacts kind of cultures of entrenched misogyny in Paraguay that 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.040 I am not really competent to go into. But there's 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:16.080 you know, a lot, there is a lot written about 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:19.080 like what happens when you're like the first generation of 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:23.399 young men after this, and there's like like twenty twenty 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.800 to one female male ratio and all this attention being 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:28.880 kind of like lavished on you because of how badly 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.400 this war goes and how decimated the population of men 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:34.400 was prior to this. There you can find some really 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.119 interesting writing on this. I don't want to, like, uh, 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:39.600 we'd be getting a little bit off of where I 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:41.720 feel competent talking to go much more into it, but 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.600 it's most worth reading that, Yeah, you're going to fuck 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:48.680 up your society for genetically as well as social. It's 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.440 really it's very rarely good if ninety percent of any 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:56.880 group and your society gets massacre. He's like he's bested 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.280 the Black Death in terms of decimating his own Sula 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.400 Lopez gets our gets the behind the Bastards of award 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.720 for probably the worst at Warum, I don't think I've 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:10.200 ever heard if anyone fail worse at having a war 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.800 than this. But you know who's good at engaging in 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:20.040 unrestricted warfare? Oh, the Raith Young Corporation. That they are, 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:22.520 They are one of the best. And all of our 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.879 sponsors believe that you can only truly achieve victory in 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.960 a conflict by salting the earth with the bones of 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:31.800 your enemy. Um. So you know you get the gold, 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:34.320 isn't it You grow grows from the bones, That's right, 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:36.880 That's right, that's where gold comes from. And also where 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:49.560 the best delivered mattresses are forged from. Anyway, the biom mattress. Ah, 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:54.159 we're back. So Paraguay just kind of barely ekes it 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:57.040 out as a country after this. Um. And if you're 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.199 if you're interested in kind of much more detail about this, 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:01.600 the War of the Triple Alliance, which if you google 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:03.840 it that's also like you'll get a lot of World 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.320 War One results, but this is a different thing. The 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:10.399 Lions led by Donkeys podcast did a good series on this, 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:12.359 which which you should check out. They go into it, 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:13.840 spend a lot more time on it than we are, 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:16.040 because this is just kind of setting the scene. So 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:20.119 Paraguay and kind of like there's this series obviously afterwards, 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:23.600 Brazil occupies the country, the people, the countries who would 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:25.680 want to take about a third of the land mass 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.040 of Paraguay as kind of part of the war debt, 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:30.800 and then there's another like cash war debt that staggers 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:33.960 the economy for a few generations. The only reason that 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:36.639 Paraguay survives at all less a nation is that Brazil 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.960 and Argentina are big rivals and neither of them is 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:42.720 willing to let the other have Paraguay. Right, they kind 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.520 of like maintain a rump state there just because it's 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:47.760 not worth dealing with the conflict over who gets to 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:52.840 have it now. Argentina in this period had played host 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.760 to a lot of dissident Paraguayans, members of the old 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:57.920 upper class who had had to flee the country when 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:00.680 the dictators took over right when Spain gets kicked out, 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:04.480 and a bunch of these guys, when Argentina participates in 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.199 this invasion of Paraguay, they form up and join the 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.800 Argentine army and like make a unit of like exiled 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:14.120 Paraguayans fighting to liberate the country from Lopez. And so 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:17.560 after eighteen seventy, Argentina successfully kind of helps maneuver these 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.920 guys into power, and they draw up a democratic constitution 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:24.480 that basically existed as an excuse for these people to 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:27.119 sell off all of the state's land and businesses for 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:31.800 their own personal profit. The British banking firm Bearing Baring's brothers. 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:36.840 Oh yeah, James, how did I know that the British 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:39.680 banking industry would get involved? I was just going to 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.399 remark of selling off the entire country's assets for your 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:44.600 own personal profit is a very British vibe. Like the 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:48.240 thing is so it is. I mean waiting as a 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.199 as a rule, if there's like a dictator in the 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.600 eighteen hundreds, there's a British bank behind God, let's not 0:22:54.800 --> 0:23:01.040 let's not limit the time period so narrowly, very air. Yeah, 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:03.440